Policies, Measures and the Monitoring Needs of Forest Sector Carbon Mitigation

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POLICIES, MEASURES AND THE MONITORING NEEDS OF FOREST SECTOR CARBON MITIGATION JAYANT SATHAYE Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, California, USA N.H. RAVINDRANATH Centre for Ecological Sciences Indian institute of Science Bangalore 12, India Abstract. Forest sector mitigation options can be grouped into three categories: (1) management for carbon (C) conservation, (2) management for C storage, and (3) management for C substitution. The paper provides background information on the technical potential for C conservation and sequestration worldwide and the average costs of achieving it. It reviews policy measures that have been successfully applied at regional and project levels toward the reduction of atmospheric greenhouse gases. It also describes both national programs and jointly implemented international activities. The monitoring methods, and the items to monitor, differ across these categories. Remote sensing is a good approach for the monitoring of C conservation, but not for C substitution, which requires estimation of the fossil fuels that would be displaced and the continued monitoring of electricity generation sources. C storage, on the other hand, includes C in products which may be traded internationally. Their monitoring will require that bi- or multi-lateral protocols be set up for this purpose. Key words: Carbon dioxide, costs, forests, Joint Implementation,mitigation, monitoring, policies 1. Introduction Forests constitute both a sink and source of atmospheric CO2. Forests absorb carbon through photosynthesis but emit carbon because of the burning of trees due to anthropogenic and natural causes and through respiration and decomposition. Managing forests and forest products to retain and increase their stored carbon, and to use wood products as a fossil-fuel substitute, will help to reduce the increase in atmospheric CO2 and stabilize climate change. The monitoring of the flows of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and stocks of carbon is an important issue that deserves increasing attention as the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) evolves into a protocol for reducing GHGs across nations. In this paper, we report on the national forest policies and measures, and international projects and programs, that may be successfully pursued to reduce net GHG emissions and the issues surrounding their monitoring and verification. Forests currently cover about 3.4 Gha (Gha = 109 ha) (FAO, 1995). Fifty-two percent of the forests are in the low latitudes (approximately 0-25 N and S latitude), followed by 30% in the high latitudes (approximately 50-75 N and S latitude) and 18% in the mid latitudes (approximately 25-50 N and S latitude). The world's forests store large quantities of carbon, with an estimated 340 Pg C (i Pg = 1015 g = 1 Gigatonne) in vegetation, live and dead above- and below-ground, and 620 Pg C in soil, mineral soil plus O horizon. An unknown quantity of C is also stored in wood products, buildings, furniture, paper, etc. Mid- and high- The U.S. Government's right to retain a non-exclusive, royalty-flee licence in and to any copyright is acknowledged. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 2:101-115, 1997. (~ 1997 KluwerAcademic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Transcript of Policies, Measures and the Monitoring Needs of Forest Sector Carbon Mitigation

P O L I C I E S , M E A S U R E S AND T H E M O N I T O R I N G N E E D S O F F O R E S T S E C T O R C A R B O N M I T I G A T I O N

JAYANT SATHAYE Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, California, USA

N.H. R A V I N D R A N A T H Centre for Ecological Sciences

Indian institute of Science Bangalore 12, India

Abstract. Forest sector mitigation options can be grouped into three categories: (1) management for carbon (C) conservation, (2) management for C storage, and (3) management for C substitution. The paper provides background information on the technical potential for C conservation and sequestration worldwide and the average costs of achieving it. It reviews policy measures that have been successfully applied at regional and project levels toward the reduction of atmospheric greenhouse gases. It also describes both national programs and jointly implemented international activities. The monitoring methods, and the items to monitor, differ across these categories. Remote sensing is a good approach for the monitoring of C conservation, but not for C substitution, which requires estimation of the fossil fuels that would be displaced and the continued monitoring of electricity generation sources. C storage, on the other hand, includes C in products which may be traded internationally. Their monitoring will require that bi- or multi-lateral protocols be set up for this purpose.

Key words: Carbon dioxide, costs, forests, Joint Implementation, mitigation, monitoring, policies

1. I n t r o d u c t i o n

Forests constitute both a sink and source of atmospheric CO2. Forests absorb carbon through photosynthesis but emit carbon because of the burning of trees due to anthropogenic and natural causes and through respiration and decomposit ion. Managing forests and forest products to retain and increase their stored carbon, and to use wood products as a fossil-fuel substitute, will help to reduce the increase in atmospheric CO2 and stabilize climate change. The monitoring of the flows of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and stocks o f carbon is an important issue that deserves increasing attention as the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) evolves into a protocol for reducing GHGs across nations. In this paper, we report on the national forest policies and measures, and international projects and programs, that may be successfully pursued to reduce net GHG emissions and the issues surrounding their monitoring and verification.

Forests currently cover about 3.4 Gha (Gha = 109 ha) (FAO, 1995). Fifty-two percent of the forests are in the low latitudes (approximately 0-25 N and S latitude), followed by 30% in the high latitudes (approximately 50-75 N and S latitude) and 18% in the mid latitudes (approximately 25-50 N and S latitude). The world's forests store large quantities of carbon, with an estimated 340 Pg C (i Pg = 1015 g = 1 Gigatonne) in vegetation, live and dead above- and below-ground, and 620 Pg C in soil, mineral soil plus O horizon. An unknown quantity of C is also stored in wood products, buildings, furniture, paper, etc. Mid- and high-

The U.S. Government's right to retain a non-exclusive, royalty-flee licence in and to any copyright is acknowledged.

Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 2:101-115, 1997. (~ 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

102 JAYANT SATHAYE AND N.H. RAVINDRANATH

latitude forests are currently estimated to be a net C sink of about 0.7 + 0.2 Pg C/yr. Low-latitude forests are estimated to be a net C source of 1.6 + 0.4 Pg C/yr (Brown, Sathaye, Cannell and Kauppi, 1996) caused mostly by clearing and degradation of forests. These estimates may be compared with the C release from fossil fuel combustion, which is estimated at 5.5 + 0.2 Pg C/yr for a comparable period, and is now past 6.0 Pg C/yr.

2. Technical Potential and Cost of Carbon Mitigation

Forest management practices that can restrain the rate of increase in atmospheric CO/can be grouped into three categories: (1) management for C conservation, (2) management for C storage, and (3) management for C substitution. Conservation measures include options such as controlling deforestation, protecting lbrests in reserves, changing harvesting regimes, and controlling other anthropogenic disturbances, such as fire and pest outbreaks. Storage measures include expanding forest ecosystems by increasing the area, and/or biomass and soil C density, of natural and plantation forests and increasing storage in durable wood products. Substitution measures aim at increasing the transfer of forest biomass C into products rather than using fossil-fuel-based energy and products, cement-based products, and other non-wood building materials.

Monitoring and verification requirements are quite different for each type of option. Conservation measures will require the monitoring of a designated area under threat of deforestation within a country, where leakage is likely to be of big concern. Storage measures, on the other hand, may involve the export of products across countries. Monitoring of carbon stored in these will be difficult, and no procedure exists at the moment for monitoring carbon stock in products that span international boundaries and might last over decades. Substitution measures require that the quantity of displaced fossil fuel be estimated: This estimation is similar to that encountered in energy efficiency and renewable energy projects that displace fossil fuel. Estimation and monitoring methods for these can range fi'om simple to very complex and expensive ones.

The potential land area available for the implementation of forest management options for C conservation and sequestration is a function of the tectmical suitability of the land to grow trees and the actual availability as constrained by socioeconomic circumstances. Globally 700 M ha of land might be available for C conservation and sequestration, 345 M ha for plantations and production forestry, 138 M ha for slowed tropical deforestation, and 217 M ha for natural and assisted regeneration (Nilsson and Schopfhauser, 1995 and Trexler and Haugen, 1995). Table 1 provides an estimate of global potential to conserve and sequester carbon based on the above studies. The tropics (0-25 degree N and S latitudes) have the potential to conserve and sequester by far the largest quantity of C (80%), followed by the temperate zone (25-50 degrees N and S latitudes) (17%) and the boreal zone (3%) only. Natural and assisted regeneration and slowing deforestation account for more than half the tropical amount. Forestation and agroforestry contribute less than half of the tropical total sink, but without them regeneration and slowing deforestation would be highly unlikely (Trexler and Haugen, 1995).

POLICIES, MEASURES AND MONITORING NEEDS 103

Scenarios show that annual rates of C conservation and sequestration from all the aforementioned practices increase over time. Carbon savings from slowed deforestation and regeneration initially are the highest, but from 2020 onwards, when plantations reach their maximum C accretion, they would sequester practically identical amounts as slowed deforestation and regeneration (Figure 1). On a global scale, forests turn from a global source to a sink by about 2010 as tropical deforestation is offset by C conserved and sequestered in all zones.

Using the mean establishment or first costs for individual options by latitudinal region (Brown, Sathaye, Cannell and Kauppi, et al. 1996), the cumulative cost (undiscounted) for conserving and sequestering the quantity of C shown in Table 1 for the same scenario, ranges from $250 billion to $300 billion at an average unit cost ranging from $3.7 to $4.6 per Mg C. Average unit cost decreases with more C conserved by slowing deforestation and regeneration as these are the lowest cost options. At an annual discount rate of 3%, these costs fall to $77-99 billion and the average unit cost to $1.2-1.4 per Mg C. Land costs, the costs of establishing infrastructure, protective fencing, education, and training tend to be excluded and are not included in these cost estimates.

While the uncertainty in the estimates is likely to be high, the trends across options and latitudes appear to be sound. The factors causing uncertainty are the estimated land availability for forestation projects and regeneration programs, the rate at which tropical deforestation can be actually reduced and the amount of C that can be conserved and sequestered in tropical forests. In summary, policies aimed at promoting all the mitigation measures in the tropical zone are likely to have the largest payoff, given the significant potential tbr C conservation and sequestration in tropical forests. Those aimed at forestation in the temperate zone will also be important.

Table 1 does not include the costs of monitoring and verification for each type of option. Costs for monitoring of forestation projects have been estimated to be of the order of 10% (Ravindranath and Bhat, 1997 in this issue), which would amount to about US $28 billion. Monitoring the policies and measures to slow deforestation is more complex in that it may require the implementation of region- wide policies with both monetary and other costs associated with it. Fearnside (1997) for instance discusses that both carbon stock/flow and policies need to be monitored in order to ensure that appropriate policies are sustained over long time periods.

3. Policies, Programs, and Projects for Managing Forests for C Conservation and Sequestration

Forest management measures with the largest potential for C conservation and sequestration range (in declining order of importance) range from slowing deforestation and assisting regeneration in the tropics to forestation schemes and agroforestry in tropical and temperate zones (Table 2). To the extent the forestation schemes yield wood which can substitute for fossil-fuel-based material and energy, their C benefit will be multiplied. We examine the policies measures relevant to the implementation of each type of measure below.

104 JAYANT SATHAYE AND N.H. RAVINDRANATH

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Table 1. Global C that could be sequestered and conserved and related costs between 1995-2050

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Zone conserved (P~) (US $/Mg C) (109 US$)++ High Mid

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Slowing 10.8 - 20.8 2 (0.5-15) 44-97** deforestation

Total 60 - 87 3.7-4.6 250-300

Notes: * Includes above- and below-ground vegetation, soil and litter C. + Establishment or first cost (undiscounted). Average of estimates reported in the literature. Most

estimates do not include land, infrastructure, protective fcncing, education, and training costs. Figures in parenthesis indicate the range of cost estimates.

++ Cost figures in Col. 4 are per tonne of vegetation carbon. Total costs (Col. 5) are thus lower than the figure obtained by multiplying t C in column 3 by $/t C in column 4.

** For slowing deforestation and regeneration combined. Source: Brown, Sathaye, Cannell and Kauppi 11996)

POLICIES, MEASURES AND MONITORING NEEDS 105

3.1 SLOWING DEFORESTATION AND ASSISTING REGENERATION

The causes of deforestation range from clearing of forest land for agriculture, mineral extraction, and hydro-reservoirs to degradation of forests for fuel wood. Land cleared for agriculture may eventually lose its fertility and become suitable only as range land. Various socioeconomic and political pressures, often brought about by the needs of rising marginal populations living at subsistence levels is a principle factor causing deforestation in the tropics.

Both forest-related and indirect, non-forest, policies have contributed to deforestation. These include short-duration contracts that specify annually harvested amounts and poor harvesting methods which encourage contractors to log without considering the concession's sustainability and also a royalty structure that provides the government with too little revenue to permit adequate reforestation in order to arrest forest degradation after harvesting (Gillis and Repetto, 1988). Non- forest policies, which lead to direct physical intrusion of natural forests, are a prime cause of deforestation. These may include land tenure policies that assign property rights over forest lands to private individuals, settlement programs for farmers living in marginal areas, investments promoting dams and mining, and tax credits or deductions for cattle ranching.

Table 2 shows the policies, programs and projects (PPP) whose successful implementation would slow deforestation and assist regeneration of biomass. Each of these will conserve biomass, which is likely to have a high C density, and will maintain or improve the current biodiversity, soil and watershed benefits. The capital costs of these PPP are low, except in the case of recycled wood, where the capital cost depends on the product being recycled. The first two policies are likely to reduce sectoral (agricultural) employment as deforestation is curtailed. The elimination of subsidies, however, may create jobs elsewhere in the economy to offset this loss. Sustainable forest management has the potential to create economic activity and employment on a sustained basis. The implementation of a forest conservation legislation requires strong political support and may incur a high administrative burden. Removing subsidies may run into strong opposition fi'om vested interests. Jointly implemented projects are slow to take off as the perceived transaction costs are high and financing is difficult to obtain where C sequestration is the main benefit. While sustainable forest management is politically attractive, its implementation requires local participation, the establishment of land tenure

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and rights, addressing equity issues, and the development of institutional mechanisms to value scarcity; all of which may incur higher administrative costs.

Monitoring of these measures to slow deforestation can be done either at a site or a regional level. Regional level monitoring has the advantage of being able to detect leakages from one deforested site to another potential one. Leakage may occur as deforesters move to other sites to pursue farn~ing or other goals. Remote sensing can be expensive since it requires the analysis of satellite images over time accompanied by ground-truthing. Although the cost of satellite images is beginning to decline, some appropriate sampling technique, geographically stratified one for example, is necessary to reduce the required time and effort.

Although reducing deforestation rates in the tropics may appear to be difficult, the potential for significant reduction is high (Trexler and Haugen, 1995), and India is an example where the government has adopted explicit policies to halt further deforestation.

Since 1980, the Indian government has pursued a series of policies and programs that have stabilized its forested area at about 64 M ha (Ravindranath and Hall, 1995), and, as a consequence, forests are estimated to have sequestered 5 Tg C in 1990 (Makundi, Sathaye and Cerrutti, 1992). Prior to 1980, the government had a priority to increase food production by increasing area under food grains and to distribute land to landless poor. This had resulted in significant deforestation during the period 1950 to 1975, when about 4.3 M ha were converted largely to agriculture (FSI 1988). The Indian policies and programs to slow deforestation and assist regeneration include:

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Forest Conservation Act 1980: the powerful legislation has made it very difficult to convert forest land to other uses. Ban on logging on state-owned primary forests in many states since mid 1980s. Significant reduction in concessions to forest-wood-based industry and promotion of shift to farmland for wood raw material.

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Conversion of 15 M ha of forests to protected areas (national parks and wildlife sanctuaries). Joint Forest Management (Society for Promot ion of Wastelands Development 1993) program where degraded forest lands are revegetated jointly by the local communities and forest department.

These policies have survived for nearly 15 years, despite a growing population and increasing demand for biomass. The Indian government appears to have successfully relied on conservation legislation, reforestation programs, and community awareness to achieve forest conservation.

The India example illustrates national programs and policies, which were initiated for protecting or halting degradation of forested areas. In addition,

108 JAYANT SATHAYE AND N.H. RAVINDRANATH

protection projects supported by foreign governments, NGOs, and private companies are beginning to play a role in arresting deforestation and conserving and/or sequestering C. The Rio Bravo Preservation and Forest Management project in Belize, which has been approved under the US Initiative on Joint Implementation (US IJI), will purchase a 6000 ha parcel of endangered forest land to protect two adjacent tracks from conversion to farmland, and is estimated to sequester 3 Tg C (US IJI, 1996). The project participants include Wisconsin Electric Power Company, The Nature Conservancy, Programme for Belize, Detroit Edison Company, Citienergy and PacfiCorp. The ECOLAND project will preserve tropical forest through purchase of 2000-3000 ha in the Esquinas National Park, which is under threat of deforestation in southwestern Costa Rica (REF). The project partners include US, Costa Rican, and Austrian institutions.

The above examples illustrate policies, programs, and projects that are being implemented to slow deforestation; sustaining these will pose many challenges. In India, the declining rural population growth rates have helped policy makers sustain the slowed deforestation, Elsewhere, however, the fundamental challenge will be to continue to find alternative livelihood for dwellers, such as in Thailand, and/or deforesters, such as in Brazil, which may require integrating dwellers into the urban social fabric of a nation. Deforesters may be drawn to the forest for reasons other than land cultivation, and policy makers need to resort to largely non-forest policies in such situations. Another challenge in the protection of forests and national parks is to increase the government budget allocated for this purpose which are often inadequate to provide for enough forest rangers, fencing, and other infrastructure to halt land encroachment.

3.2 FORESTATION

Forestation means increasing the amount of C stored in vegetation (living above- and below-ground), dead organic matter, and in medium- and long-term wood products. This process consists of reforestation that is replanting trees in areas which were recently deforested, and afforestation, which implies planting trees on areas which have been without forest cover for a long time. In temperate regions, reforestation rates tend to be high: Canadian reforestation during the 1980s was reported to be 720,000 ha/yr (Winjum et al. , 1992) and that for the U.S. has averaged 1 M ha/yr between 1990-1995 (Moulton et al. , 1996). There is a significant afforestation effort in both tropical and temperate countries. China alone boasts of having planted 30.66 M ha between 1949 and 1990 (Xu, 1995), while India had 17.1 M ha planted by 1989 (Ravindranath, 1992). The U.S. had 5 M ha of forest plantations by 1985 (Winjum, et al. , 1992), while France has more than doubled the forest area since the beginning Of last century from 7 Mha to 15 Mha.

The policies, programs and projects for forestation and agroforestry include (1) government investment programs targeted towards these measures on government- owned land, (2) community forestry programs that may be supported by government extension services, and (3) private plantations with subsidies provided by the government (Table 3). These PPP may be targeted towards production forests, agroforestry, and conservation forests. The management of conservation forests for soil erosion, water catchment, and like purposes ensures a high C

POLICIES, MEASURES AND MONITORING NEEDS 109

density for forests that have many non-C benefits. Those managed primarily for C sequestration would have to be located on lands with low opportunity costs or else they would likely be encroached upon for other uses. Government subsidies may take the form of taxation arrangements that do not discriminate against foresny or those that provide easy access to bank financing at lower-than-market interest rates.

Monitoring of forestation programs will have to focus on not only the on-land carbon, but also that stored in products, which may be traded internationally. Compared to the monitoring of deforestation, which is likely to be national in scope, that of forestation programs may require coordination across countries. Institutionally, this will pose more significant challenges than in the former case. Monitoring of carbon in products that are exported may require a protocol between the two trading countries for this purpose. Such a protocol would have to account for the lifetime of the products, and if they substitute for energy-intensive products, then the fossil-carbon that is displaced would have to be estimated.

Forestation programs are also likely to occur at specific sites in a country, which may be too small to justify the expense of using remote sensing techniques. Project-specific monitoring may be done using inventory techniques discussed elsewhere in this Special Issue. The flow and stock of carbon over a project's life will depend on the timing of thinning and harvesting of multiple products, that are typical of a self-sustaining project. The timing and frequency will be dictated by these items, and the cost and availability of adequate personnel for monitoring them.

An important issue in the forestation option is that the accounting of physical flows of carbon will show that at the end of a project, and the lifetime of its products, the stored carbon will be released to the atmosphere. In effect, the carbon sequestration project would have produced no net reduction of the carbon in the atmosphere. In order to maintain the carbon benefits of the project, either it has to continue in perpetuity or some other project has to take its place after it ends. The cost of carbon sequestration is then the discounted value of such a string of projects. Finally, it is important that the verification function be carried out by third-party institutions not directly engaged in the project itself in order to ensure its unbiased evaluation (Watt and Sathaye, 1994).

Government subsidies have been important for initiating and sustaining private plantations, Since World War II, 3.15 M ha have been afforested in France, and the 1995 French National Programme for the mitigation of climate change (French Republic, 1995) calls for afforestation rate of 30,000 ha/yr, which will sequester between 79-89 TgC over 50 years, at a cost of 70 $/tC. Due to funding difficulties and some opposition from the farming community, they are currently anticipating about 11,000 ha per year through to 2000.

The Indian government has pursued a reforestation program of planting 1.5 to 2 M ha annually since 1980, which has been largely dominated by short-rotation softwood plantations of eucalyptus (FAO, 1993). The program is estimated to have produced 58 Mt of industrial wood and fuelwood in India annually since 1980 (Ravindranath and Hall, 1995). An interesting development in the last few years has been the planting ofteak (tectona grandis) by private entrepreneurs with capital raised in private capital markets. This program, while occupying only a few thousand hectares at present, has the potential to expand to 4 to 6 M ha of the 66

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M ha of degraded lands (Ravindranath and Hall, 1995). The teak may be used in buildings and furniture.

In addition to national programs, those initiated and supported by foreign governments, NGOs, and private companies are starting in some countries. One example is RUSAFOR, which is a project approved by the US Initiative on Joint Implementation (US IJI) in the Saratov region of Russia (US IJl, 1996). The project has planted seedlings on 1200 ha of marginal agricultural land or burned forest stands. Initial seedling survival rate is 65%. The project will serve as an example for managing a Russian forest plantation as a carbon sink.

For government forestation and agroforestry policies to succeed, the formulation of a coordinated land-use strategy, agreed land tenure rights which are unambiguous and not open to legal challenges, and markets developed enough to assure a sustained demand for forest products will be essential.

3.3 SUBSTITUTION MANAGEMENT

Substitution management has the greatest mitigation potential in the long-term (Marland and Marland, 1992). It views forests as renewable resources and focuses on the transfer ofbiomass C into products that substitute for, or lessen the use of, fossil fuels rather than on increasing the C pool itselfi The growing of trees explicitly for energy purposes has been tried with mixed success in Brazil, the Philippines, Ethiopia, Sweden, and other countries (Hail, Rosillo-Calle, Williams, and Woods, 1993). Wright and Hughes (1993) report that under optimistic assumptions regarding annual tree yield and thermal conversion efficiency, biomass energy systems could offset 20% of 1990 U.S. C emissions. Hall et al. (I 993) estimate that 267 EJ/yr, or about 80% of global commercial non- biomass energy use, could be supplied by biomass plantations.

The establishment of plantations on deforested and otherwise degraded lands in developing countries and excess cropland in industrialized countries offers major developmental and environmental benefits (Table 4). Village biomass energy systems have the advantage of providing employment, reclaiming degraded land, and associated benefits in rural areas, which are particularly important to developing countries. In India, the Ministry of Non-conventional Energy Sources (MNES) has taken a conscious decision to promote renewable energy programs with a number of financial incentives such as tax and depreciation benefits. A comparison of a diesel-based system with an identical capacity wood gasifier system has shown that when life cycle costing is done, the cost of electricity for the wood-gas-based electricity is lower than a diesel alone system (Mukunda, Dasappa and Shrinivas, 1993).

In developing countries, the use of electricity in rural areas is low. In many countries, such as in Sub Saharan Africa, less than 5% of villages are electrified and in countries such as India even though over 80% of rural settlements are electrified, less than one-third of rural households have electricity. Appropriate government policies are needed that will (1) permit small-scale independent power producers to generate and distribute biomass electricity, (2) transfer technologies within the country or from outside, (3) set a remunerative price for electricity, and (4) remove restrictions on the growing, harvesting, transportation, and processing of wood - -

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except possibly restrictions on conversion of good agricultural land to an energy forest. Ravindranath and Hall (1995) report that by shifting to a decentralized bioenergy option, India could reduce its carbon emissions by 67 Tg C/yr.

The growing of trees to yield wood as a substitute for fossil fuels is likely to occur within a nation, given the high cost of transporting wood, which has a low energy density. Monitoring of the amount of fossil fuel that the wood will substitute for is no different than that for any other source of renewable energy or energy efficiency. Several approaches of varying complexity exist for this purpose and can be utilized for monitoring. The carbon credit claimed by the nation may be less than 100% depending on the accuracy of the method used to estimate carbon flows. Once the carbon emissions are avoided, the project developer or the nation can take credit for it in perpetuity, or for at least as long as the fossil fuel would have lasted, which may be measured in decades for oil and gas, and centuries for coal.

4. Conclusions

The potential land area available for C conservation and sequestration is estimated to be 700 M ha. The total C that could be sequestered and conserved globally by 2050 on this land is between 60 to 86 billion tC. The tropics have the potential to conserve and sequester by far the largest quantity of C (80%), followed by the temperate zone (17%) and the boreal zone (3% only).

Slowing deforestation and assisting regeneration, forestation, and agmforestry constitute the primary forestry-related mitigation measures for C conservation and sequestration. Among these, slowing deforestation and assisting regeneration in the tropics (22.3-59.5 billion tC) and forestation and agroforestry in the tropics (22.7 billion tC) and temperate zones (12.5 billion tC) hold the most technical potential of conser)ing and sequestering C. To the extent the forestation schemes yield wood, which can substitute for fossil-fuel-based material and energy, their C benefit can be four times higher than the C sequestered in the plantation. Excluding the opportunity costs of land, the monitoring costs, and the indirect costs of forestation, the costs of C conservation and sequestration average between $3.7 to 4.6 per tC. Monitoring may add up to 15% to these cost estimates.

The Indian government has instituted policies and programs to halt deforestation. For these to succeed over the long term, enforcement to halt deforestation has to be accompanied by the provision of economic and/or other benefits to deforesters that exceed or equal their current remuneration. Monitoring of carbon flows has to be accompanied by that of other benefits in order to ensure that the stated beneficiaries are indeed receiving the claimed benefits.

National tree planting and reforestation programs, with varying success rates, exist in many industrialized and developing countries. Here also, adequate provision of benefits to forest dwellers and farmers will be important to ensure their sustainability. The private sector has played an important role in tree planting for dedicated uses, such as paper production. It is expanding its scope in developing countries through mobilizing resources for planting for dispersed uses, such as the building and furniture industries. Monitoring of forestation programs and projects

114 JAYANT SATHAYE AND N.H. RAVINDRANATH

poses many difficult questions about international agreements and the lifetime of projects and products, and these difficulties may limit the carbon credit that they can claim to less than their full potential.

W o o d residues are used regularly to generate steam and/or electricity in most paper mills and rubber plantations, and in specific instances for utility electricity generation. Making plantation wood a significant fuel for utility electricity generation will require higher biomass yields and thermal efficiency to match those of conventional power plants. Governments can help by removing restrictions on wood supply and the purchase of electricity. Monitoring of the carbon benefits, however, should be relatively less complicated than that for forestation programs and no different than for any other renewable energy projects.

The ongoing joint ly implemented projects address all three types of mit igation options discussed above. The lessons learned from these projects will serve as important precursors for the monitoring of future mitigation projects. Without their emulation and replication on a national scale, however, the impact o f these projects by themselves on C conservation and sequestration is l ikely to be small. For significant global C reduction, national governments will need to institute policies and programs that can be readily monitored, and provide, local and national, economic, and other benefits while conserving and sequestering C.

Acknowledgment

Funding for this work was provided by the US Environment and Technology.

AID, Office of Energy,

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